I love Twitter! I find it’s an excellent way to share my knowledge and help people with their marketing. It’s also an easy way to keep up with my contacts far and wide, both business and social. If you manage it well it is a superb marketing tool.
No matter what size of company you are, having your social media icons on your website is good practice today. Even large corporates encourage people to visit their Facebook page and follow them on Twitter. It’s a great way for them to engage with their customer-base, which most of their main websites don’t do.
So a ‘Follow me on Twitter’ or ‘Like’ for a Facebook page is good. What about a Twitter feed?
As a small business your Twitter feed is likely to be your personal account – so, consider the impact of your comments to friends and family appearing on your website. If you want to keep the freedom to ‘talk’ to friends and close associates on Twitter, create a business account and keep that for business-related material.
The same goes for Facebook – don’t attach your website to your personal Facebook account, create a Page for your business and ensure you keep the posts business-like.
I’m not saying you can’t be friendly and approachable, but it can distract people if they see unrelated comments and there are still some people who don’t ‘get’ social media and consider it frivolous. Seeing social chat and jokey comments on your business website can influence them away from you.
If you don’t want to do business with people who can’t cope with your comments to friends then ignore this blog, but people have expectations of a website so ensure your website doesn’t fall short of your target audience’s hopes!
In short, post material that meets your readers’ expectations – where they’re expecting to find it.
